The Ending Of Ghostbusters: Afterlife Explained

If you have to single out one character who forms the character of the "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" narrative, you definitely lean in the direction of Phoebe (McKenna Grace), the brilliant young granddaughter of Egon Spengler who cracks open the mystery at the heart of the film and forms a connection across generations of her estranged family in the process. At the beginning of the film, Phoebe is an outsider not just in Summerville, but in her own family, as her mother only half-jokingly tells her things like "don't be yourself" in an effort to get her to form connections with people. By the end of the film, she's the heart of her extended new family and friend group, a hero to the world (even if they don't know it), and a newly minted Ghostbuster, continuing the tradition set up by her late grandfather.

We see Phoebe's journey to self-actualization, but the question remains: What happens to her next? It's easy to imagine her as the first junior member of the Ghostbusters, attending a fancy science-based New York City school by day and wielding a proton pack by night. It's also easy to see her staying in Summerville for a while, archiving and continuing her grandfather's work as she digs deeper into the mysteries of Gozer. Whatever happens, Phoebe has a bright future not just because of what she's achieved, but because she's learned how to really be herself.

At the beginning of the film, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) feels like a failed mother. She hasn't been able to make life in the city work out, her kids are growing and changing in ways she doesn't fully understand, and her only refuge in life is a broken down old house in the middle of Oklahoma, left to her by a father who never had time for her. As she admits in a half-joking way during "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," she feels like her soul is slowly dying.

But like every other member of her family, over the course of the story Callie finds a new sense of purpose that begins when she sees her children coming alive in ways they never have before, and ends when she realizes the father she never really knew not only cared about her, but did everything he could to protect her from forces she couldn't understand at the time. That new sense of purpose also comes through the arrival of Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), the local seismologist and teacher who not only adores her, but adores her kids as well.

So, what happens to them next? Having made peace with her family's past, Callie seems ready to build a new future with Gary, whether that's in Summerville, New York City, or somewhere else entirely. A new family unit has grown out of the ashes of the old one.

"Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is largely set in Summerville, Oklahoma, an out of the way former mining town that's basically a tiny dot on the map with seemingly nothing to show for itself but a half mined-out mountain and a surprisingly cool carhop burger joint. By the end of the film, though, Summerville has become the epicenter of supernatural activity on Earth, as the discovery of a temple built by an eccentric architect to summon an ancient Sumerian god propels the Ghostbusters into a new adventure.

After Gozer is trapped by the team, things seem poised to quiet down in Summerville, and we see the old ECTO-1 car back in action in New York City, but that doesn't mean the Oklahoma town won't get any more attention. If it truly did serve as the force behind a supernatural re-awakening, it's bound to attract all manner of investigators, scientists, tourists, and media, turning a once sleepy town into a minor boom of activity in the middle of the American plains. Podcast won't be the only person investigating its mysteries anymore, and that could both lead to good and bad things for the town, particularly if intrepids occult sleuths start examining that old temple a little too closely...

Over the course of the film, the mystery at the heart of "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is slowly unearthed, often quite literally, through the exploration of the old Sandor mining complex, specifically the mountain where Selenium was mined in the early 20th century. Eventually, Phoebe, Trevor, Podcast, and Lucky discover a tomb/temple complex beneath the mountain built in tribute to Gozer, the Sumerian god who first appeared in the original "Ghostbusters" film.

The tomb is full of interesting details, but Phoebe picks up one in particular that stands out with regard to the franchise's future: A stone relief that features carved dates of various years in which major catastrophes occurred, including the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, the 1908 Tunguska event, the "Manhattan Crossrip" of 1984, and the predicted rise of Gozer in 2021.

What's especially interesting about these carvings is that there appears to be another, partially obscured date carved into the rock sometime after 2021. It's difficult to make out exactly when it is, and of course we have no idea what it could reference, but Gozer's closest followers probably have some idea, and the presence of the temple in Oklahoma suggests there could be others out there.

So, what future catastrophe awaits this next generation of Ghostbusters? Time will tell.

In one crucial scene in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," Phoebe calls the old number in a vintage Ghostbusters commercial and is connected to Ray Stantz's occult bookshop in New York City. After a little nudging, she's able to get Ray to tell her a little of the backstory behind the breakup of the Ghostbusters. According to Ray, it had its roots in two things: Egon's obsession with the re-emergence of Gozer, and an almost complete lack of new calls for supernatural assistance.

So basically, since the 1980s, ghosts have either not been a problem at all, or they've been such a negligible problem that the Ghostbusters weren't able to keep the business afloat even in the historic metropolis of New York City. Gozer's return obviously shook at least a few ghosts loose, and at the very end of the film we see ECTO-1 back in action, but how many ghosts are there to really bust? Gozer is, after all, in captivity now, and the portal that awakened them seems to be dormant. Has something else shaken loose that will guarantee continued work for the team, or are they just going to do what they can with what they have for as long as possible? Obviously, a sequel would help to clear this up quite a bit.

Though Phoebe is pretty much inarguably the star of "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," you could make the case that the most important character in the overall story is actually her deceased grandfather, Dr. Egon Spengler (the late Harold Ramis).

By the time of "Afterlife," Egon is a ghost, lurking in his house in Oklahoma and biding his time until his genius granddaughter puts all the pieces of his plant to defeat Gozer together. While that happens, we learn that somewhere along the way, he decided he had to make a massive sacrifice in his quest to keep the world safe from a dark god. When he couldn't convince his fellow Ghostbusters that Gozer was about to resurge, Egon instead cut himself off from everyone with the exception of Janine, moved to Oklahoma to be near the old Gozer site, and abandoned both his family and his friends for their own protection.

It's a move that speaks to his obsessive nature, but also to his ability to think in terms of the greater good. Egon's choices could easily be dismissed as part of his character as the coldest Ghostbuster, but it took an enormous level of love and care for the people in his life to do what he did. It was a sacrifice that the film only scratched the surface of, but in the end, it proved that Egon Spengler may have had the biggest heart of all of the Ghostbusters.